Some good news for a change. The proto-restoration makes a bit of progress of late.

Instance one: the remodeled FSSP parish in Minneapolis:

New is on the right

This church was far from the worst in its prior condition, but I think the improvement is palpable, no? Please can we get rid of the carpet in our churches? It is a daily prayer for me that altar rails be reinstalled in all Catholic parishes, too, and that table altars be gotten rid of! Personally, I could do with more visible art on display including murals on the walls, but the Fraternity seems to be more low key?

I know the priest in Minneapolis. He’s a good man. I miss him!

Via Sensus Fidelium, a Missa Cantata was offered in Lima, Peru recently. The video isn’t that great, but you can still enjoy the panoply of Catholic art and images of Saints present in this church. Now that’s definitely more my style, save for the overly bright lights surrounding the altar. Nevertheless, this is glorious. More like this:

On another positive note, America Needs Fatima’s petition to the Holy Father to defend the immemorial Doctrine of the Faith on marriage, the family, and other moral doctrines has been signed by nearly half a million souls. If you have not signed the petition, yet, I urge you to do so, for what its worth.

Along similar lines, the Credo Priests effort to get US-based priests to sign an oath to always uphold and defend the moral doctrine of the Faith no matter what comes out of any Synods of dubious doctrinal authority now has nearly 1200 signatures. However, that’s still only about 2.5% of American priests, vice the nearly 10% of priests from England and Wales who signed onto a similar effort in their own countries. I was also surprised at the paucity of priests from the Fraternity of St. Peter on the list – fewer than 2 dozen by my count have signed on (though I thank and pray for those who have). I have to believe that is because they are unaware of the effort. If you don’t see a good priest’s name on the list and you have some means of contacting them, inviting them to do so with great charity would be a wonderful thing to do. I believe the list is still being actively updated.

This Saturday, August 22 there will be a nationwide protest effort against Planned Parenthood. In the DFW metroplex (Dioceses of both Dallas and Fort Worth), there are four Planned Butcher-baby locations. You can pray and protest outside any of them, although only the Dallas and Fort Worth locations murder babies and sell their parts for profit.

Since August 22 is a Saturday, more people will hopefully be able to attend. I plan to go to the mill in Dallas. The protest runs from 9a to 11a. Take part in this nationwide campaign to wage spiritual warfare against the dark principalities and powers that keep Banned Parenthood in operation!

Friends of the Unborn. Check the list below and find the nearest PP office to you. In charity to the UNBORN who are killed every day in most cruel and painful ways, you are needed to witness publicly that you believe that murdering the innocent cannot continue.

Do not wait! Check the locations below and pray for the courage and strength to STAND UP for life against the murderers.

Your voice is needed now, and your presence is desperately needed on August 22, 2015. The killing continues because we have not seriously combated against the evil done every day. [This is a most important point. But where has the failure most manifested itself? Is it among the laity, recent pontiffs, or the “middle management” of the Church, priests and especially bishops? Where has the leadership been most lacking?] Let us not grow weary, but take our rosaries to the streets and bear witness to the Love of God for his children.

Fort Worth

Plano

Speaking of efforts against PP, Catholics in Charlotte staged a large rally this past weekend and had over 350 souls present in attendance! Most positively, at least 6 priests were present performing minor exorcisms on the PP facility and blessing the crowd. Reader MFG apprised me of this and I am glad to share his photo with you:

In addition, the event garnered strong media coverage, quite a change from Dallas where even 10,000 souls at the March for Life elicits at best a back-page 100 word mention in the Dallas Morning News and which is embargoed entirely by the radio and TV media.

That’s a move in the right direction. Typically, a good number of evangelical-types had to blaspheme the Mother of God and denigrate her key role in the economy of salvation as the Mediatrix of all Grace through their ignorance and hostility. It takes a pretty rare politician these days to post something like this. May his governance be always in accord with the virtues and Truth enshrined in Our Lady.

Not Assumption-related, but still my favorite image of the Blessed Mother, Our Lady of the Expectation:

The Instrumentum Laboris, or working document, of the upcoming Ordinary Synod on the Family poses grave dangers to the family, says the large, mainstream pro-family organization Voice of the Family. Even more, the organization maintains that Catholics have a moral duty to oppose the direction promoted by this disordered working document, which is basically a replay of the unapproved mid-term “Relatio” of the Extraordinarly Synod from last year (my emphasis and comments):

The preparatory document for the Catholic Church’s Family Synod “poses a very real danger to the family”, says Voice of the Family, an international coalition of pro-life and pro-family organisations.

The document, known as the Instrumentum Laboris (Latin for “working tool”), will be discussed by bishops from around the world, when the second round of the Church’s Synod on the Family is held in the Vatican this October.

John Smeaton, co-founder of Voice of the Family, said: “The Instrumentum Laboris threatens the entire structure of Catholic teaching on marriage, the family and human sexuality. [“The entire structure….” I must most sadly agree.]

“The document undermines the doctrine of Humanae Vitae on contraception, is neutral on the killing of unborn children by IVF, and prepares the ground for Church acceptance of cohabitation and same-sex unions.

“The Instrumentum Laboris also resurrects the discredited Kasper proposals for Holy Communion for unrepentant adulterers, reduces the indissolubility of marriage to a mere ‘ideal’, and undermines the position of parents as their children’s primary educators.” [See my previous post for more on one marriage for life as an “ideal.” Interestingly, there has been concern from local homeschooling parents regarding what seems to be a policy change in the Diocese of Dallas regarding homeschooling of children. There is not much to really point out as problematic, yet, but a policy document was updated and it seems to reduce the role of the parents in the education of their children in favor of a more institutional approach. There may be more on that if I am able to get more clarity on the policy]

Mr Smeaton continued: “Voice of the Family urges Catholics not to be complacent or give in to a false sense of obedience, in the face of attacks on the fundamental principles of the natural law. [No one can make you remain silent in the face of the promotion of error or abuse, even if that promotion comes from the very highest level of Church authority. I would say that in extremis, the situation may actually demand that we actively speak out]

“Catholics have a duty to oppose the direction being taken at the Synod. If that direction is not reversed, the greatest victims will be those who are most vulnerable, especially children, born and unborn”, concluded Mr Smeaton.

“Catholics have a duty to oppose the direction being taken at the Synod.” Think about that. These times are unprecedented. Not since the Arian heresy has so much of the institutional Church gone over into not just vague errors on minor theological points, but wholesale advocacy for a course of action that would have the result of obliterating the entire moral edifice of the Faith. A far from radical, mainstream family organization is now at pains to bring this mind-blowing, heart-rending situation to the attention of the faithful.

Incredible is not the right word. I’m not sure what is. Twilight Zone springs to mind. We seem to be living through an alternate reality, a nightmare that we can never quite wake from.

After reading the article below, it is radically apparent to me – as it has been for a very long time – that modernists still openly seek the total destruction of the Church and its disappearance from the lives of men, for redefining sin out of existence is to obliterate the very reason the Church was created. And yet the leftist-modernist faction at the Synod of Death most certainly seeks to obliterate the concept of sin (my emphasis and comments):

the campaign to promote Cardinal Walter Kasper’s proposal to allow the reception of Holy Communion by divorced and remarried Catholics simply prompted by misguided but understandable sympathy, or is it motivated by something more sinister and revolutionary? Thepublication of the proceedings of the “Study Day on Pastoral Practice concerning Marriage and the Family,” organized in Rome on May 25, 2015 by the presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences of Germany, France, and Switzerland reveals that the agenda of the Kasper proposal proponents is about a lot more than reminding people in adulterous unions that God loves them. The real issue, to put it bluntly, is the redefinition of sin. Adultery is just one of the targeted subjects; homosexuality also looms large.

One of the presenters, Alain Thomasset, S.J., is vexed by the idea that some acts are intrinsically evil: “The interpretation of the doctrine of acts called ‘intrinsically evil’ seems to me to be one of the fundamental sources of the present difficulties in the pastoral care of families, since it underlies to a great extent the condemnation of artificial contraception, of the sexual acts of the divorced and remarried and of homosexual couples, including stable ones. This appears to many as incomprehensible and seems pastorally counterproductive.” [These men are scandalized by Jesus Christ. They are scandalized by a Church that makes demands of people, at least on the “sacred” sexual sins. Thomasset, Kasper, and their ilk firmly believe in so-called corporate sins, things antithetical to their leftist religion – ostensible environmental degradation, capitalist rapacity, lack of “tolerance,” “phariseeism,” etc. These men want to replace the Catholic Faith with modernist/leftism, and always have. They obviously believe they have a unique opportunity to accomplish their life-long dream with the current pontificate, where maybe having some distant association with a mafioso draws direct papal condemnations but Planned Barrenhood’s sale of body parts from millions of aborted babies elicits crickets]

…….How can a Catholic theologian say this? [Ummm…..because he’s not Catholic, but a modernist-leftist?] He is contradicting the constant teaching of the Church on the objective evil of sin and the moral imputability of sinful acts. Sin has been redefined out of existence. Do whatever you want, and do not worry about outdated categories that produce guilty feelings. In fact, having guilty feelings is seen as evidence of the cruelty, and hence the falsity, of the Church’s moral doctrine. If you are made to feel guilty for doing what you want to do, then you have been robbed of freedom and are a victim of a dictatorial system. [And yet Jesus Christ Himself said that he came not to bring peace, but the sword, and that only those who suffered greatly by taking up their cross and following Him would be worthy of salvation]

……..For the innovators who reject that sure and certain teaching, the Church’s mission is about consolation, reassurance, affirmation. Salvation is not a question to be considered; it is presumed. [Perhaps. Or perhaps they are so atheistic as to no longer hold such prosaic beliefs as salvation, damnation, etc]The pressing urgency for the Church now is to justify people in violating what the Church has always taught to be binding in the realm of sexual morality. In this new approach, the guilty feelings and social stigma experienced by those once considered to be living in sin are obstacles to living in tranquil harmony with God and their fellow believers. The constant and unchanged moral teaching, not the sinner, is guilty of offending God. It must be changed. [That’s an excellent summary, but I have become increasingly convinced by studying the beliefs and behaviors of modernist-leftists for years that it is false to ascribe good motives, like finding a way to lead souls back to the Church, to their actions. Whether they will admit it or not, even to themselves, these men seek the destruction of the Church. They know this because the Church, under their leadership, has failed to hold any standard on these sexual sins in a pastoral sense for decades, and yet the Church has imploded in that time. These men know all too well that obliterating the Church’s moral doctrine in the sexual arena will completely destroy Her credibility, and lead to the Church becoming the episcopalian sect, which is on its death bed. They are possessed of a reprobate sense and are dominated by satanic impulses. They can no longer discern good and bad, right from wrong. And if you need confirmation of that, read the following…..]

The “Study Day” proceedings conclude with an unsigned “Summary” of the discussions. The effort to redefine sin out of existence is plainly evident. We read:

The directive images of marriage and the family define an ethical point of reference of great importance whose different facets human beings can only gradually transform into reality.[This is total heresy, very nearly apostasy, because it basically denies Grace and makes living in accord with the moral law an all but unobtainable degree of perfection, something that is proven false by 2000 years of lived Christian experience. That beliefs so perverse could even be DEBATED at the highest levels of the Church shows how far the revolution is advanced and the depths of the crisis] From another angle this principle is important: he who loves lives a transcendental experience. Some aspects that must be considered as authentic testimonies of the love of God and of the action of the Spirit are to be found also in relations of love that do not apparently conform to the norms of the Church.[This is diabolically false.] We must look for God everywhere! In this context the importance of theological reflection on the “logoi spermatikoi” (seeds of the Word) was stressed. Faced with these structures of reality the Church is challenged to go beyond any form of un-nuanced reflection.[Satan loves shades of grey, right?] In relation to the thematic of homosexuality a particular challenge is here posed to which we must respond in our reflection. [The unspeakable abuse of another person by sodomizing them can never, ever be “loving.” And relations between those drawn to these perverse lusts are essentially never, ever exclusive or “monogamous.” They are unstable and perverse by definition. So every justification posited for rationalizing the “normalization” of this sin that cries out to Heaven for vengeance is false.]

The Church that fails to uphold the moral law, especially in the area of sexual sins, is a Church that has no reason to exist. Look at the mainline sects and see how they have imploded over just this abrogation of the moral order with regard to the “groinal” issues. Look at the Church’s own implosion since these sins have been swept under the rug and ignored in the vast majority of parishes and dioceses around the world for decades. And look how the evangelical sects that still address sexual morality, if in a disordered manner, continue to grow.

I appreciate the priest-author’s analysis. It’s very good. But I think we are well past the time where spades must be called spades. Anyone who promotes a moral theology so detached from and implacably hostile towards the Doctrine of the Faith and the true good of souls can not be given the sacred name “Catholic.” They are heretics at best, most are total apostates, if they were remotely honest. So what is happening at the Synod is not a discussion between Catholics of differing points of view but a defense of the Faith against an attack by diabolically motivated foreign elements.

Who needs a Redeemer when there is nothing from which to be redeemed? Who needs a Church if everyone is saved?

There is only one possible result to the entire modernist-leftist experiment the Church has tolerated for far too long: cold death and total destruction. Lord, how long until You are pleased to restore Your Church?

Might have been more true if half the sheep were already dead with blood all around, and the sheep doing the chastising was dressed in cassock and 78 years old.

Even better:

In this culture, it is almost impossible to escape absorption of really destructive ideas. But I do think a good deal of the opposition to homeschooling, especially unthinking comments like “but what about socialization?!?” stems not from just blind acceptance of cultural propaganda but also a great deal of self-justification. Parents who homeschool are threatening to those who do not. Mom staying home to not just raise the kids but actually school them is a tremendous investment in time and energy, almost always involving a great deal of material sacrifice on the part of the family. Every parent likes to believe they are doing wonderfully by their children, but homeschooling is such a huge and countercultural trump in this area it unnerves a great many people.

So what does our culture teach people to do when someone obviously excels far above others? To “level the playing field.” Remember the imbecile who said that parents who read to their children should feel guilty because they are giving their children “unfair advantages” by doing so? How do you imagine influential dweebs like that guy feel about homeschooling? Or elite private schooling, for that matter?

I pray a great deal that my wife and I will be able to continue homeschooling our children until they are through high school. I am not at all certain that it will be “permitted” to do so.